The Midshipman Prince (17 page)

      
Embarrassed silence.

      
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Walker exclaimed. “All three of you are in the Royal Navy. How can you be in the navy and not know how to swim?”

      
“Lucas, I don’t even know anyone that can swim,” said Smith. “If your ship goes down, where are you going to swim
to
? Knowing how to swim only prolongs the drowning, so why bother to learn?”

      
It was a logic that, at the moment, Walker was not able to assail.

      
“Well, unless someone has a better idea, we go tonight. We’ll wade across the creek. If it gets too deep to continue wading, we’ll come back ashore and get some logs for the non-swimmers to float on. But, we’re going tonight.”

* * *

      
The water was warmer than he expected and the muck on the bottom was thicker—much thicker—than he thought possible, slowing their progress to a snail’s pace. It was like walking through knee-deep cement, each step causing hydrogen sulfide and methane bubbles to come up from the murky bottom creating an unbelievable stench.

      
As they waded across the creek, the water grew deeper. First to their waists, then to their stomachs, then chests; finally, Susan called out in a throaty whisper, “Lucas?”

      
He turned around to see Susan Whitney with the water up to her neck. “All right, move over here, put your arms around my neck and climb on my back,” he whispered.

      
They continued, the water rising ever higher until it was up to their necks when Smith stopped.

      
“Lucas, I wasn’t kidding earlier. I really can’t swim. If we keep going...”

      
“I can’t either,” Hanover added. “Oh God!”

      
“What is it?” Walker whispered.

      
“It’s a rat. There’s a rat in the water with us!”

      
“Don’t worry about it; he won’t bother you. Besides, it’s probably just a muskrat. They don’t eat much.”

      
“That’s not funny, Walker. It’s a
rat
. I am sure it is. I hate them. I...”

      
Walker remembered an old saying that no battle plan ever survives the first five minutes of a battle. This plan was apparently no exception for, as soon as they were about half way across the creek, the American sentry felt the need to take a leak. Where was the most convenient location to do that? The beach, of course.

      
As the sentry scrambled down the bank, Walker harshly whispered, “FREEZE. Everyone freeze. Don’t make a sound, don’t move a muscle until he leaves.”

      
Nothing could be heard in the pitch-black night except the rustling of a light breeze through the neighboring trees, and the curses of the sentry as he scrambled down the bank. The night breeze was starting to generate small waves that lapped on their necks.

      
Behind the sentry was a clear, star-filled, sky with a surprisingly bright moon casting its beams across the water. Near the waterline the sentry was unhurriedly opening his fly, and in the foreground... well... in the foreground, as if he were casually riding one of those moonbeams across the water, was the biggest water rat Walker had ever seen—paddling away, headed straight for them.

      
The sentry had placed his musket over his shoulder on its sling. Apparently he had one of the old style trousers, 13 buttons holding up a flap, which he was unbuttoning. He seemed in no particular hurry.

      
The rat drew closer.

      
The sentry found the object of his needs and began urinating into the water. The rat, hearing the sound, angled away from it and moved even closer to the group.

      
Now, rats are not the brightest creatures on the planet but they do have an inbred curiosity that is matched by few other animals. Seeing three new kinds of logs in the water, he departed from his intended course to check them out.

      
The sentry’s stream seemed to last forever.

      
Smith was the first “log” the rat came to and he did a half-circle around him, stopping briefly to investigate Smith’s ear. He then headed for Hanover.

      
“Steady, Bill.” Walker whispered.

      
“Jesus, God,” Hanover whispered back in agony. “Tell me when it’s gone.”

      
That damn sentry must have consumed the water ration for a regiment,
Walker thought.

      
The rat did a 360-degree loop around Hanover, seemingly fascinated by the fact that a log should have hair.

      
The sentry finally finished and slowly re-buttoned his pants.

      
The rat gave Walker and Whitney a cursory once over and continued on his way, convinced the logs represented nothing to eat and nowhere decent to live.

      
And the sentry started his climb back up the rise to his post.

      
“Now slowly, quietly, let’s just all keep walking, Walker said.

      
They made it to the other side and hurried to drop down in the sand under the rise. Walker crawled a bit further down the beach to peer over the lip of the berm.

      
“All right.” He waved them over. “He’s about 50 yards down and moving away from us. It’s now or never. I’ll keep an eye on him while you guys’ start running. And for God’s sake be quiet when you run. Just keep on going until you’re well out of sight down the beach. I’ll join you in a minute.”

      
“What are you going to do?” Susan asked.

      
“I am going to watch the sentry to make sure he doesn’t see you.”

      
“And if he does?”

      
“You don’t worry about that. You just keep running no matter what. Are all of you ready? All right...” Walker popped his head up over the berm for one last look at the sentry, then gave a sharp hissing whisper. “GO!!”

      
The three started running in a crouch. After 30 or 40 yards, it became a sprint. They were desperately fighting the soft sand with each step, but determined to get as far away from this awful place as possible. Once they were a hundred yards or so down the beach, Walker checked the sentry once more. He still had not made the turn at the other end of his rounds, so Walker took off after the others.

      
About a half mile later, he caught up to them. The three were exhausted, lying in a heap in the sand. Walker too was dying—his lungs felt like they were about to explode, his legs were rubbery, and he had a pain in his side that felt like a knife wound. Sprinting on sand is no fun.

      
He collapsed next to them to recover.

      
A few minutes later he heard Smith starting to chuckle. He was pointing at Hanover and Whitney both of whom were covered with sand and disgusting muck. The chuckle turned into a laugh. Hanover and Whitney looked at each other and at Walker, and started to laugh as well; and the laughter quickly escalated from gentile to hysterical.

      
Suddenly the enormity of the danger they had just faced, the muck, the sentry, the rat... especially the bloody rat... it all hit them at once and the tension was transformed into howling laughter.

      
Without warning, Walker picked up Whitney, carried her, screaming and kicking, over to the ocean, waded in with her, and dumped her into waist deep water. The other two joined them and a general water-fight began—two against two, one against three, every man for himself—like kids. Eventually the four, exhausted but clean, waded ashore.

      
“All right Walker, what now?” Susan asked. “You’ve been doing a pretty good job so far.”

      
“Let’s keep walking up the beach a bit farther and we can talk about it.”

      
Walker outlined his thoughts. The objective was to get Prince William into British hands as quickly and safely as possible. The problem was that every British military unit of any strength south of New York was with Cornwallis and trapped on the peninsula. Baltimore was no good, no British troops there anymore. Philadelphia was pretty much a rebel stronghold, which left New York. But, how do you get to New York?

      
Walker came to the conclusion that trying to get to New York by land was too risky—especially when there was no way of knowing which people along the way were Tories and which were Patriots, who was friend and who was foe. No, he reasoned, they needed a ship or a boat of some kind. The problem was that neither he, nor any of the others, had a clue as to how or where they might get one.

      
“Well, I do know this, we aren’t going to get help by walking along this desolate beach forever. Let’s cut inland. If I recall that map we saw at Moore House, if we head west, sooner or later, we’re going to come across the Gloucester Road. We can take that to the Town of Gloucester. It’s big enough so we can blend in, but small enough so we might be able to get more information.”

* * *

      
The sandy shoreline quickly gave way to the rich brown dirt of the Virginia countryside. The moon gave them enough light to keep them from bumping into things, but not enough for them to visually stand out. Before long, they ran across the dual-rutted tracks of a farm-to-market road heading west and they took it.

      
Roads in colonial Chesapeake were not as highly developed as in other parts of the colonies; they didn’t need to be. Most towns were located on creeks, rivers, or on the bay itself and it was a lot easier, cheaper, and faster to move goods and people by water than by land. The exceptions were a handful of roads that linked the maritime towns to larger cities in the interior. In good weather, these were navigable by almost any kind of conveyance. Feeding in to these main arteries were the farm-to-market roads that linked the individual farmers to the major highways and frequently involved opening and closing gates as the traveler passed from one property to another.

      
Travel by horse was uncommon. The reasons for this were twofold. First, horses were expensive to buy and maintain; and second, the average person could usually travel farther and faster on foot then he could on a horse. A human on foot could cover 25 to 30 miles in ten hours of walking and do that day after day. A horse could go faster, but after 15-20 miles would need to be rested until the next day. Far better—and cheaper—to just walk.

      
Be that as it may, Walker was very much wishing for a horse as the evening developed. Contrary to his name, walking was not something he did much of, and he could see the same was true of the others.

      
Susan was up ahead with Hanover, so Sidney dropped back to talk with Walker.

      
“So, what do you think, Lucas?” Smith began.

      
“About what?”

      
“About all this. Our chances of pulling this off.”

      
Walker was silent for a minute. “I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s like one minute I am sure we can do it and get out of this mess. The next... I think we don’t have a prayer.

      
“How about you?”

      
Smith shrugged. “I think it doesn’t matter.”

      
“What do you mean?”

      
“Look at it this way, Lucas. Think of it as a giant circle—a wheel, if you will, that’s turning. The purpose of a wheel is to turn. That’s all it knows; that’s all it does. But in order for that wheel to make one revolution, in order for it to complete itself, that which was high must become low, and that which was low must become high.”

      
Walker was trying to make out Smith’s face in the moonlight. “What the hell are you talking about? You sound like some kind of mystic or something.”